It was a story from Angwyn’s past, long before the nation had become respectable, that she’d found in her library. It wasn’t the first she read but it quickly became her favorite. The words she spoke, the melody she used to shape them, slipped free of their own accord, as naturally as breath, coming from a part of her more akin to soul than mind.
It was olden days, because all the best stories were set in olden days, when a good and noble people suffered beneath the cruel yoke of a tyrant. A monarch of consummate cruelty, whose lust for power no amount of conquest seemed able to satisfy. He held sway in great cities and trading towns and tiny, outland villages, and no affront was so slight as to go ignored or unpunished. The people endured because, despite their proud history, they knew no other way to survive. Resistance guaranteed only a retribution so terrible that death, when it came, was considered a mercy.
In this time of shadow, against all odds, a simple man strode forth to plant his feet and set his sword and tell this dread liege, “No more.”
When the monarch sent a troop to arrest him, he was nowhere to be found. Assassins were dispatched to murder him, and were never seen again. Royal tax collectors were routed, their moneys disbursed to those who needed it most. Royal warehouses were raided, their contents used to feed the hungry. Royal edicts were mocked, and throughout the length and breadth of this land of sorrow, for the first time in a generation, whispers of defiance were heard.
An army was sent, to discover that they no longer dealt with a man alone. Others had flocked to his side, and the monarch’s soldiers were sent back to him on foot, stripped to their tunics, with a warning that he and his were no longer welcome in this land. The monarch had those hapless souls impaled for their failure, his warning plain for those who would soon follow: return in victory or return not at all, the only alternative is death.
And so began a war. And soon the realm entire was drenched in blood. A line was drawn across the soul of the nation and eventually all its citizenry—noble and common, secular and religious—came to the moment when they had to choose their sides. On the one hand was a puissance almost beyond all comprehension. Against it, a desperate yearning for liberty, for the triumph of right over might. This man, this rebel, spoke of equality, of a future where every man and every woman would be judged by character and deeds, rather than the accident of birth. He spoke of honor, he spoke of justice, and found himself loved for it.
And hated.
Who knows how the battles would have ended? Some were won, others lost. Like tides upon a shore, the campaigns flowed back and forth across the countryside, ultimately resolving nothing. War has its own implacable dynamic: the best of the breed are often the first to die. Those who remained began to whisper among themselves, that no matter how many battles were won there was always another to be fought tomorrow. Victories against this monarch brought no peace, in a conflict where defeat meant sure disaster.
In the beginning the rebels had everything to gain, and that gave them courage. After long years of struggle they found themselves with too much to lose, and that made them afraid.
So, at the last, telling themselves this was for the best, they betrayed their chieftain.
In chains, he was dragged to judgment and thence to the place of execution, before a massed crowd of those with cause to hate him most, the nobles whose estates he had burned, the abbots whose treasuries he had looted, the common folk dispossessed of property, or worse, of the lives of loved ones who had gone to their deaths in battle against him. They cheered to see him helpless and could not wait to see him bleed.
Before their eyes, the chieftain was subjected to unspeakable tortures, a death that was guaranteed to be as slow as it was agonizing. It was so terrible a sight that some in the crowd cried out in sympathetic pain and horror.
Yet the chieftain uttered not a sound.
The flesh was peeled from his bones, long past the point when any lesser soul would have fled its casement, yet he breathed. And said nothing.
Where there had been cheers and catcalls, there was only silence now, broken by sobs from those who could not endure the awfulness before them.
“Kill him,” someone cried, but there was no hatred in this voice. It was a plea for mercy.
The Lord High Executioner—a wizened stick of a creature, from whom had been sucked every scrap of kindness or decency—leaned close by the chieftain’s ear and whispered: “Beg for mercy, and it shall be yours.”
When he heard no reply, he tried again.
“Be sensible. We have barely begun. You can see this sun set and tomorrow’s rise, in such agony as the mind cannot conceive. Or we can end it. Quickly. Cleanly. Plead for mercy, and you shall be at peace.”
The crowd was growing restive. The chieftain still lived, he was still awake to hear every word and suffer every torment, and not one among those who watched could find the temerity within themselves to mock such absolute courage. He would not speak and he would not die and that was more defiance to their monarch than any one of them had thought possible. And the whisper began among them, in the most secret hidey-holes of their being, that perhaps their ruler was not so all-powerful after all. Perhaps there might be hope.
The Executioner spoke again, with an edge of desperation to his voice because he, too, sensed the shift in the crowd’s mood. He could not let the chieftain die, not without publicly breaking his spirit, yet no longer could he afford to let the rebel live, since each breath was like an arrow through the foul heart of his monarch’s majesty. He bent to his task a final time, his voice as soft and caressing as a lover’s, for the bond that had grown between him and his victim was as intimate, to win through deceit what could not be forced.
“This has gone on long enough. You have done enough, and more. Your task is done. Ask for mercy, and you shall be free.”
At last the chieftain spoke, in a voice that filled every corner of the war yard, that made strong men weep and women gather their companions to their breast.
A great shadow fell across the square and every eye looked up, to behold on every parapet, atop the crown of every tower, at the summit of every mountain that could be seen about this haunted, hated spot…
…dragons.
A score, a multitude, more than any present could remember seeing, more than anyone could conceive of ever being, gazing down on this place of execution with ancient eyes to witness the chieftain’s final act of supreme and lasting defiance. One took for its perch the peak of the monarch’s own battlements, directly across the yard from where the chieftain hung, of such a size that none could understand why its weight didn’t crush the stone to rubble beneath it, with wings so broad they could envelop the entire castle. Its eyes, that had witnessed the birthing of the world, gazed into those of this Daikini—and when the chieftain smiled, the dragon wept.
As the echoes of the chieftain’s cry began to fade, that dragon lifted his own face to the heavens and roared defiance of his own. First one, then the others on the walls, and those in the distance, took up that selfsame cry and cast it forth in pride and joy with force enough to shatter the casement of heaven itself.
A single word…
…against which evil ultimately has no power, nor can tyranny long endure.
“Freedom!”
Elora spoke in the barest of whispers, the selfsame voice that the chieftain had used to speak it into the Executioner’s ear. Yet so still was the room, so skillful her projection, that every ear took note.
She was crouched low, shoulders bowed, head bent, a posture of grief and loss. Suddenly, in a movement as smooth and fluid as quicksilver, she rose to her feet, the upward thrust of her body giving her utterance added force. This outcry was full-voiced and she prayed it would be heard in Angwyn by all the innocent souls imprisoned there.
“Freedom!”
The acoustics were wretched and the ech
oes of her shout faded quickly, as though the room itself had gobbled them up. In the vacuum that stillness caused there was a sudden creaking and groaning of the wood, as if some incredible weight had settled on the roof. A wind skirled past doors and windows and the flames flashed brighter in both hearths, and more than a few listening clutched charms or loved ones or both and whispered of dragons, some in fright and some, delight. For Elora herself, it was a reminder of her rescue of the firedrakes, when her blood burned white-hot, every pump of her heart sending another surge of glory through her system. It was a passion so intense she was surprised to find herself still whole and thankful she wasn’t actually glowing; a wonder so all-encompassing, all-consuming that she was reduced to ash and resurrected in the same fantastic blip of time.
By the Great Gods, she thought, words do have power!
Another moment followed and with it a distancing from the storyteller’s magic Elora had spun with her tale. There was no holocaust in her heart, only honest blood. One set of hands came together from the audience before her, then another and another, and faster than a line of falling dominoes the whole room exploded in applause and cheers, leavened with hearty sighs of relief that it was only a story and jovial chuckles at how they’d all been spooked at the end by that gust of wind.
Elora herself was drenched, top to toe, as if she’d just plunged into a pool. She was trembling, too, when voices began to chant her name, more exhausted than she’d ever been after a hard day at Torquil’s forge. The beginnings of a smile tickled the side of her mouth as Duguay gathered her into his arms from behind, offering his strength to sustain her—in the nick of time, too, because her knees were on the verge of total collapse.
“Elora,” they chanted. “ ’lor-ah! ’lor-ah!”
In the face of such adulation, she basked and couldn’t understand for the life of her why she was sobbing.
“What did I do?” she cried to Duguay.
“What came naturally, that’s obvious,” he replied into her ear. “There’s a born bard in you, Elora, an’ that’s no error, am I right?”
“Sure wouldn’t have thought it to look at my past. Do they understand? What I was trying to say?”
“Some more than others, but that’s always the case. Yon Maizan, they got your message, sure. Left before you finished, all in a clump.”
“What?”
She searched the room, with all the Sights at her disposal, and saw that Duguay was right. The Maizan were nowhere to be seen.
In a flash of intuition, she knew where they had gone and what they were about. She was on the move herself that selfsame moment, realizing she hadn’t a prayer of making her way through the crowd and out the main doors. The audience was already pressing forward, clapping, cheering, wanting to touch her, congratulate her, to try through that little bit of contact to reclaim some of the wonder of her performance. If she let them catch her, she’d never get out. She wasn’t sure she’d even survive.
She dropped loose of Duguay’s embrace, kicking herself sideways in a crab scuttle that took her to the dais. Then, proprieties be damned, she flung herself over the high table and dashed for the kitchen entrance beyond the far hearth. Through the door, returning the applause of the serving staff who’d been watching with smiles and nods and waves, trying her best to be gone before anyone was sure she was actually there. Out the back to where the trash was dumped, trying not to gag on the stench or wonder how the cooks could stand it, leaping for the near balcony and going up the wall much like a monkey, thankful both Ryn and the Rock Nelwyns had taught her how to climb.
It took neither time nor effort to reach the roof, but as she clambered to its peak she almost came to disaster as one foot found open air where it expected shingles and she thumped down hard on her front, the pitch so steep that she was propelled headlong toward the gutter and a four-story fall to the ground below. Fortunately, a flailing hand found the same hole that had tripped her up. That broke her slide and provided a solid enough anchor for the moments she allowed herself to regain a semblance of breath. Even so, when she opened her eyes, she saw more spots than not before her vision and each breath hurt as though she’d been soundly punched.
“There’s a hole in the roof,” she told herself stupidly, and to her surprise found three more on the other side. Looking along the building, MageSight revealed an identical pattern, almost all the way to the other end. They looked like claw marks, and if called to testify, she’d have to say they most resembled the footprints of some giant creature coming briefly, and lightly, to rest….
Here, she stopped herself, not at all comfortable with where this line of thought was going.
What? she scoffed in silence. Are you going to presume that a dragon dropped in to hear your story? How come no one saw?
But then, memory reminded Elora of the story Thorn Drumheller told, no one saw Calan Dineer, the dragon that had brought him and my bear to Tir Asleen the night before the Cataclysm destroyed it.
At that point all her speculations were banished by the clash of steel from the direction of Ryn’s cell. Instinct prompted her to look that way, conscious thought overrode the impulse and turned her eyes toward the main gate instead, to find one door wide open.
She almost cried, Alarm, but another sweeping glance in a circle all about her confirmed her worst fears. The battlements were clear, without a sign of the normal scattering of sentries. She heard horses in the distance, more sounds of a struggle, the faint thump of chains against a padded target that she suspected was covered in fur. The stable was closer, but she suspected she’d have a better chance catching them at the gate.
She used the length of the building as a runway, then launched herself in a wild leap for the parapet beyond. She tried too hard, she made it with room to spare and so much excess momentum that she crashed full tilt into the palisade beyond, leaving her sore and a little winded and glumly anticipating a sensationally dramatic bruise come the morrow as decoration for playing such a daredevil. She ignored the aches and protests of her flesh as she made her way along the walkway, accelerating with every step until she was flat-out running.
There was one corner tower between her and the gate. She guessed that if she was going to find trouble, it would be there. Without breaking stride, she twisted the clasp that held her skirt in place and rolled the waistline once about her hand. Not much as weapons went, but all she had, and with that thought, she promised herself to find a way to integrate at least one of her bottomless traveling pouches into any future costume.
Through the doorway, a Maizani was waiting, the warrior who’d confronted her at Ryn’s cage. The instant he realized it was she, a huge and unpleasant grin split his face. He was between her and the exit, and set himself to make sure she went no farther.
She caromed off the wall ahead without slackening speed, then used the opposite wall as a springboard, kicking herself up into the air as though off a pair of tightly coiled springs. In mid-flight she tucked arms and legs together into a somersaulting ball, rolling as she went so that she’d bounce off the next wall on her feet. As she passed the Maizani, who wasn’t sure what to make of her acrobatics, her movements so quick and dramatic that he was a fatal half second behind them in his reactions, she snapped the skirt into his eyes, flicking it the same way boys do towels at one another’s backside when they’re feeling particularly obnoxious. Didn’t do him any lasting harm but she made him flinch. That was all the opening she needed as she came at him from above and behind, giving voice to a great war cry as she hammered clenched fists down close on either side of his spine, at the base of the neck. She struck the nerve clusters perfectly, right above the protective collar of his leather tunic. He made an odd little noise, his eyes glazed, his limbs lost all ability to hold him erect, and down he went with a formidable clump.
He’d be unconscious quite a while, and more sore than she for a bit longer after that.
He ha
d no sword but Elora relieved him of the long knife she found sheathed to the outside of one boot. Double-edged, well-balanced, it’d suit her fine.
So much for peace bonding, she thought, not to mention the rules of hospitality. Then she was off again.
Someone had sounded the alarm. She heard a chorus of basso barks as the wolfhounds responded to the threat, saw people boiling out of the dining hall like ants from an unearthed nest. Too late, though, for the remaining Maizan were already racing for the gate on horseback, leaving the stables afire in their wake to forestall any pursuit. Much as the Commandant and his men might like to stop these raiders, the critical priority was to save the livestock, as well as prevent the fire from spreading to the body of the fort.
The lighting was uneven, moonlight mixed with torches, but MageSight easily made up the difference, showing Elora that Ryn was tied belly down across his animal’s back, the reins of his horse in the hands of the Maizani galloping ahead. Two mounts were saddled but empty. One was presumably for the warrior Elora had already dealt with, the other for whoever had opened the gate.
She didn’t take time to think. If she did she knew she’d be too scared stiff to act. She reached the gate a few steps ahead of the Maizan and without a heartbeat’s pause hurled herself for the warrior leading Ryn’s animal. She let his body bear the brunt of the impact, and before the Maizani knew what was happening, he was unhorsed, pitched into the face of his comrade, who’d emerged from the shadows by the gate to mount up himself. In those few, frantic moves, she managed to throw a well-planned and executed escape into utter disarray. The challenge now was to get herself and Ryn out of the mess intact and unharmed.
Elora yanked on the reins, digging her heels into her horse’s ribs to make the beast rear up on its hind legs, forehooves lashing out instinctively to make anyone in front keep a respectful distance. At the same time she pulled its head to the side, trying to turn her mount back into the fort.
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